Moved to Today, 12:00 PM ET: The Venezuela Thesis with Mercator, 1 CFP CE Credit
Rescheduled from yesterday to today at 12:00 PM ET. Washington has taken majority control of more than 65 billion barrels of Venezuelan reserves, and this session was built on that thesis before the news broke.
Most international allocations stop at MSCI EAFE. Hervé Van Caloen, President of Mercator Investment Management and a cross-border allocator for more than forty years, argues that is the mistake of the decade.
His case is that Venezuela in the post-Maduro window is the most asymmetric emerging-markets setup he has seen in his career. Whether or not you end up agreeing, the session is a useful stress test of how you currently think about frontier and post-crisis exposure, and it carries CE credit.
On August 28 the President announced an agreement with Venezuela, and the White House now describes it as securing U.S. majority control of more than 65 billion barrels of proven oil reserves. For scale, the same fact sheet puts current U.S. territorial proven reserves at roughly 46 billion barrels.
The agreement was signed in Caracas and grants a U.S. led company concessions over 17 oilfields. Washington has named North American Blue Energy Partners as its partner. And yesterday Chevron said it would expand its Venezuelan operations, taking on two more Orinoco Belt fields and targeting 600,000 barrels per day within five years against roughly 280,000 today.
The terms are not settled. The concessions have been reported as running 100 years, while Venezuela’s interim president has said the energy agreement would remain in force for 25 years. That gap is exactly the kind of detail that decides whether this is a durable repricing or a headline, and it is the sort of question worth putting to a cross-border allocator live.
Hervé built this session before any of that was public. The thesis is not a reaction to the news, which is the more interesting reason to hear it now.
This session was moved from yesterday to today at the same time, 12:00 PM ET. If you already registered, your registration and join link carry over and you do not need to do anything.
What the session covers
- The political reset as a re-rating catalyst
Why Hervé treats this as a multi-decade repricing rather than a headline trade, and what would have to be true for that view to hold. - The Chevron licensing precedent
What OFAC License 41 signals about the direction of capital flow, and why licensing mechanics matter more than the political narrative. - The Argentina comparison, including where it breaks
The Milei re-opening is the closest live analogue. The session covers where the parallel holds and, more usefully, where it does not. - The 1990s Cuba license analog and pacing
What an earlier sanctions-easing cycle suggests about how slowly or quickly this kind of window actually opens. - Three sector clusters ahead of the institutional bid
Energy, financials and consumer staples, and the reasoning for that ordering. - The risk framework, which is the part most sessions skip
How to size an allocation so that a re-freeze, a revocation of the Chevron carve-out, or spread compression does not damage the wider portfolio.
Securities discussed during the session include Chevron (CVX), Grupo Aeroportuario del Sureste (ASR), MercadoLibre (MELI), Ecopetrol (EC), and Grupo Financiero Galicia (GGAL). They are named for illustration of the thesis being presented and are not recommendations.
Who it is for
Financial advisors, RIAs, family-office allocators and HNW investment professionals looking past a US-centric portfolio.
Save my seatRegistration stays open right up to the start. If the button does not work, use this link: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_fatgHtEETyyjY6tG_rrY9Q
